what does sand sound like, anyway?
in an hourglass, there is a barely audible swoosh as the sand measures time's swift and silent passage, but the sound is swallowed up by the sight of the stream of particles flowing, from top to bottom, forming a heap that is ready to be flipped again all too soon.
at the beach, any sound the sand happens to make by itself is overshadowed by the crash of waves, and the crunching sound it makes as it gives way to feet and towels and bags and umbrellas and coolers and books and iPods and sunscreen tubes (why do we insist on bringing so much with us to enjoy nature?) is muffled by our yelps as it burns our sensitive soles, or ignored completely in the search for the perfect place to sun ourselves and catch the breeze off the water.
by itself, i don't really know what sand sounds like. i'm torn between thinking that sand doesn't really have a sound, and realizing that i probably never stopped long enough to actually listen to it. could i even hear it if i tried, or have i trained my ears and my brain to only listen to the sensational, to the things that insist on my attention? i wonder what i would hear if i was able to put the ocean on mute and press my ear up against the sand. i wonder what i would hear if i put myself on mute.
in a sense, that is what has happened. i could say that "i have been muted," but i prefer the agency and sense of control that comes from saying, "i have put myself on mute," even if it's not entirely true. in any case, i cannot be heard by anyone outside of myself. whether or not that is of my own doing is largely irrelevant.
i am grasping to things that remind me of my own self, of who i am, and it feels as futile as trying to hear what the sand sounds like. as i cling, i'm waiting for the moment when i let go. even as i write this, my jaw is clenching up, yet another sign that that day is far in the future.
